2012 Mini Cooper / Cooper S / John Cooper Works Coupe

The mini-est of the current-generation Minis also will be the quickest and fastest.

Mini prides itself on being a trendsetter, although in this case it’s merely jumping aboard the latest industry bandwagon, releasing information on an upcoming model and accompanying it with official “spy” shots. Annoying as this practice is, at least we now have official confirmation of what we’ve pretty much officially known for two years now, that the upcoming Mini Cooper Coupe will be more or less a Cooper hardtop, only with less greenhouse and half the seats.

Thanks to the remaining camouflage—which looks remarkably mullet-like—we can’t see the final surface treatment of the production coupe, although it’s relatively obvious that it is nearly identical to the Mini Coupe concept from the 2009 Frankfurt auto show. The backwards-baseball-cap roof, short trunk, wraparound glass, and integrated roof spoiler all remain. Show cars need only go zero mph, but the requirement for high-speed stability on the roadgoing car prompted the addition of a deployable rear spoiler, which appears to be the only significant change. Dimensionally, the coupe covers the same footprint as the Cooper hatchback and loses barely less than an inch in overall height, although the laid-back windshield and chopped windows make the roof look several inches lower. Mini was reticent to offer curb weights, but we expect this car to weigh a bit less than the current Cooper hardtop, which is about 2550 pounds in base form.

The More Things Remain The Same . . .

We do not expect the interior—which is neither visible in these images nor mentioned much in the release—to differ from the hardtop’s, aside from the obvious loss of a bit of headroom and the rear seats. Any compromise in practicality will be offset somewhat by the standard pass-through between the cabin and “variable use” cargo area, which ought to seem pretty darn huge by Mini standards now that the seats are gone.

Mini will offer its new two-seater in the same three trims as the rest of its lineup. The base Cooper Coupe rides on 15-inch wheels and is powered by the naturally aspirated version of the brand’s ubiquitous 1.6-liter four-pot, producing 121 hp and 118 lb-ft of torque. Likewise, the turbocharged Cooper S Coupe and John Cooper Works Coupe follow the same powertrain program that yields either 181 hp and 177-lb-ft or 208 hp 192 lb-ft in other models, each with an additional 15 lb-ft in overboost mode. Like their four-seat brethren, the coupes will offer a choice of six-speed manual and six-speed automatic transmissions, the latter available with paddle shifters.

Mini claims that the base Cooper Coupe will accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 8.3 seconds and hit a top speed of 127 mph. The Cooper S Coupe is estimated to hit 60 in 6.5 seconds on its way to a top speed of 142 mph, with the JCW version coming in at 6.1 seconds and 149 mph, which would make it Mini’s fastest production model ever. For the record, we’ve regularly been able to beat those acceleration times by a few tenths in the heavier hardtop versions, so we expect the two-seaters to accelerate a bit more quickly than Mini claims.

. . . The More They, Er, Remain The Same

Handling should remain riotously fun, thanks to body-stiffening measures front and rear, as well as specifically tuned suspension components. U.S.-bound Cooper S and John Cooper Works models get standard run-flat tires, which are optional on the base Cooper Coupe. Stability control with Mini’s ABS-based “Electronic Differential Lock Control”—basically a poor man’s limited slip—is standard on the JCW version, optional on the others. All together, Mini says that the changes serve to shift the weight distribution forward slightly.

Mini will release more information on the 2012 Cooper coupes—along with camo-free photos, presumably—in coming weeks. Production starts in mid-July in Oxford, England, with U.S. deliveries beginning in October. Mini says that prices will fall somewhere between those of the respective hatchback and convertible models, which would put them somewhere around $22,500 for the base Cooper Coupe, $27,000 for the Cooper S Coupe, and roughly $32,500 for the Works.

And what about the Coupe’s partner in crime, the Mini Roadster? Mini won’t say anything about that now, so expect another sequence of spy shots, official spy shots, official information, and official images and full information soon.